Aunt Alma Atwood Denny

My father's sister Alma was the second eldest of Mama and Manning Atwood's children that lived.  She lived in Comanche, Texas all of her life.  She was very smart and attended Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth for two years.  

She taught school in Comanche before she married Harold Denny in 1926. She and Uncle Harold had one child, Cleve B. Denny; he is shown as an infant in the photo with his mother. In the large family photo from Christmas she is on the far right, standing.

Aunt Alma was particularly active in the Comanche Garden Club and became a judge for flower shows. She researched and wrote a genealogical survey of the George Atwood descendants including Manning Atwood's family.  This project took many years and she traveled extensively gathering data and meeting other relatives through the years. Every one of her generation of the Atwoods and their children all have copies of her book.

Aunt Alma was an amazing housekeeper.  Not only was her house always clean and tidy but it always smelled fresh.  She and Uncle Harold always had a big vegetable garden behind their house and grew their own vegetables and fruit.  They had pecan, peach and apricot trees as well.  She grew roses that were absolutely beautiful. Late in their lives, when her sister Aunt  Ernestine was in the hospital I remember she cut her most beautiful rose from beside her back door to take to Ernestine that day.  

The guest bedroom in their house was the one that had been Cleve's room when he was a boy and lived at home.  She had a particular picture of a little girl in a rocking chair on the wall in that room.  I loved that picture and when I asked her about it she said it was "just a magazine picture" that she had always liked and she had cut it out and put it in a frame.

After she passed away it must have been sold at her estate sale.  But in 2010 it turned up in an antique store in Fort Worth still in the same frame.  Of course I bought it and now it hangs in my house.

John Manning Arthur 1946

John was in the US Navy during World War II.  He was stationed in Bremerton, Washington after he had broken his leg in 1946.  This letter is to his aunt Mamie Frances Hansen who lived in Los Angeles.  Mamie was the "big sister" to John's mother, Ernestine, and all of the children of Mama and Manning Atwood.  She had written John and suggested he was a "Country Boy."

John's reply:

…this country boy has spent two years in the Navy in this country.  I have been everywhere except Florida and California. I've seen the best and the worst of people.  I have waded in the reflection pool ini front of the Lincoln Memorial.  I have spit 518 feet from the top of the Washington monument.  I have been dead drunk;  I have danced with the best and the worst.

I have spent a weekend in New England and talked Texas and Texas A&M to an honor graduate of the Harvard class of '34; I rode through New York City with three days to spend, but kept right on going.
I've blacked Navy fliers' eyes and they have blacked mine.  I paid $5 for a steak I could have gotten in Texas for sixty cents; I've swam in the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound, and the goldfish pond in the Boston Commons.

John Manning is the toddler in the front row with his Daddy Hipp Arthur in 1928. 

I've danced in the Pump Room, the Empire Room, Marine Room in Chicago, and at the hotels in DC, Boston, Buffalo, and across the country to Seattle.  I've drunk beer in the dirtiest taverns in the same cities.  I've hitch-hiked from Buffalo to Boston; I've been under Niagara Falls, and I brought a pocketful of Ontario, Canada, back to the United States just for the hell of it.

I've done all sorts of things just for the hell of it.  And in spite of the fact that I may be a country boy, the people that I was with and I enjoyed every minute of it.  In short, I've been around and I'm damn proud of me, and I don't mind telling anybody.

Atwood gathering about 1977

standing, l to r, Mike Hansen, Alme Denny, Hipp Arthur, Mamie Hansen, Bill Reese, Ed Atwood, Harold Denny, Patsy Reese. In front, Laura Atwood kneeling, Bill Atwood with Ann Atwood on his lap, Ernestine Arthur, TR Atwood, Margaret Reese.  I don't know where Anne was.  Maybe she took the picture.

The Atwood clan at Christmas: 1962

An Atwood Christmas gathering at Uncle Ed and Aunt Laura's house in Comanche.  Back row:  Hipp Arthur, Joyce and Cecil Rambo, Cranford Lundy.  Second row:  Ed Atwood, Ann Atwood, Laura Atwood, Ruth Lundy, Alma Denny.  Seated:  Susan Lundy, TR Atwood, Ernestine Atwood, Harold Denny, Mama Atwood.  Mama passed in 1963 so this must have been 1962.

Below is a separate picture of my dad Thurston with my little brother Bob Atwood and mother with Mama Atwood in the center.  Same day of course.

My first slipcover shop in 1974

This photo was made in front of my first shop at 5505 West Rosedale in west Fort Worth.  It opened on April 1, 1974. My family came to visit at the grand opening.

Left to right in back: Eva Mae Lundy, sister in law of aunt Ruth Lundy, Alma Denny, Daddy's elder sister, Cranford Lundy, Aunt Ruth's husband, Hipp Arthur, Aunt Ernestine's husband, Harold Denny, Aunt Alma's husband.  In front:  Aunt Ernestine and my mother Ann Atwood.